Project Flux and Google Time Travel: Reviewed

Google is at it again. With a higher net worth than the GDPs of multiple major nations in the world, it’s hard to blame them for investing in pie in the sky projects like Project Loon (using high altitude balloons to beam Internet down to developing countries), Project Ara (a modular, self-assembled smartphone with swappable parts), or of course Google Glass (augmenting your reality so you can receive that Facebook message directly to your eyeball). Not to mention actual in-the-sky projects like Google Sunroof.

In the same vein, we’ve all heard about and seen Google’s futuristic self-driving cars. And while we’re still getting used to the idea of autonomous automobiles, it looks like Google was light years ahead, and already setting its sights on an even more ambitious form of transportation. We’re talking, of course, of time travel.

Enter Project Flux. In Google’s own words, “With Project Flux our goal is to give everyone the ability to explore any place and any time, no matter where – or when – they are.”

Our team was tipped to Google’s top secret, eyes only Project Flux likely because, as a leading authority on urban sustainability, housing markets, and a loyal denizen of the blogosphere, Just Rent To Own is uniquely situated to offer the best possible take on this striking scientific breakthrough. In addition to any moral/philosophical conundrums, the ramifications of alterations to the space time continuum will, at the very least, likely have an impact on local real estate markets. Experts inform us that such an impact will be “moderate”. With that in mind, here’s our comprehensive review of Project Flux.

Don’t Do the Thing You’re Doing

The first page within the Project Flux slides informs the reader that they are indeed reading confidential material and sternly warns that reader not to share the information outside of Google. Being the bold group of dashing spies that our writing team consists of, we are of course choosing to immediately ignore that request. If for no other reason than out of spite for a lack of clarity due to poor articulation.

Don’t share outside of Google? What does that mean? Does that mean don’t share outside of the physical confines of one of their offices? Does that mean you can’t share it with a non-Google employee? So a janitor would be fair game? And, as this article is currently being written in a Google Chrome browser with the assistance of a Google profile, Google Drive, and Google Docs, we’re going to go ahead and ask the important question: in this day and age are any of us truly outside Google anymore?

Plus, PDF slides for a top secret project? Come on.

Secrecy Rating: 4/10

Great Scott!

Google’s self-driving cars were already getting a lot of flak for looking like an innocuous, slightly nervous bug that was trying way too hard to be cute. Flux looks like that bug and a Delorean had a baby that was then sketched by a twelve year old with a retro Hot Wheels obsession. Surely, something that will irreparable alter/likely destroy the course of human history could have been designed to look less tacky.

Also, Google recommends, “To shield eyes against the light emitted by the chronocompression device, travelers should wear wraparound protective glasses,” And we can’t in good faith stand behind wraparounds.

Design: 2/10

Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads

Project Flux is packed with scientific speak and equations that appear considerably mathematical as they include number and variables and everything. Upon initial inspection, we’ve determined Google’s discovery of time travel to be feasible because they include words like “chronocompression technology”, “S-Glass Epoxy Composite Fiberglass”, “0.046 mm-diameter Tungsten filament wire”, and “watts”. We could scrutinize the math and the data, but, seeing as how these are the same people who wrote algorithms that ask us if we meant to search for “innocuous” when we were trying to spell it “anoculous” we’re going to go ahead and assume they’ve got this.

Usability: 9/10

Minimum Speed of 85 MPH

Google says that, “Teleportation is only an incremental solution to make the world universally explorable” but warns that “unsafe travel with Flux can have serious repercussions on future events, up to and including erasure from existence.” We’d all be wise to heed Google’s words as very few of us have the capability to shred out sick guitar solos on demand, statistically speaking. Of course, the notion of time travel raises serious moral questions as it does pragmatic ones; chief among them being whether the course of humanity can withstand regular temporal manipulation without succumbing to complete annihilation.

That, and whether or not Google’s test flyer sign up program will be fair seeing as how participants will likely have already traveled back in time to grab all the invites before they’re released. Not cool, guys.

Practicality: 7/10

Wrap Up

Now that humanity is on the verge of being able to alter our own history and destiny on a whim, it really makes this whole lack of hoverboard thing a real sticking point. We should have figured it out by now. Knowing that time travel exists doesn’t explain why someone wouldn’t have traveled back and made them a thing at this very peak of Back to the Future Nostalgia. It just doesn’t figure.

It does, however, explain how Google managed to rise from “that weird sounding website everyone ignored over asking Jeeves” to “you will give us all your personal information, you will pay us to do it, and we will control every level of your infrastructure to great enthusiasm so that you can have a thing in your pocket that lets you talk to other people with things in their pockets about cat videos that play on things in their pockets”.

Google is the Biff Tannen of Earth.Overall: 10/10 Google Points (All Earth currencies outlawed and made obsolete at original time of this review in the year 2035)